How We Decide On A Rating

People sometimes ask how we land on a number like 4.3 instead of 4.4. The honest answer is that it's a conversation, not a formula. But there's a rough method behind it.

We start from how the game feels to actually use — controls, pacing, how it runs on average phones. A game can be gorgeous and still score low if it stutters or the controls fight you. Playability comes first because that's what you live with.

Then we weigh how well it respects your time. Does it nag? Does it wall progress behind grind? Does it work in short bursts or demand long sittings? We note that so you know what you're getting into.

Finally we talk about whether we wanted to come back to it. That gut feeling matters. A game we kept opening after the review was done tends to nudge the score up. It's subjective, and we're upfront about that.